At 15 weeks I decide to conduct an experiment with Evie to test whether she is truly conditioned to the verbal trigger “ready go”. Over the course of the bath and shower I become convinced that in fact she truly is conditioned.
The aim of conditioning is to teach the baby breath control on command. To do this we always give the verbal trigger keeping it rhythmical and constant then follow this command with water over the face.
Because during conditioning we always use a cup to pour the water over the face, very often the baby reacts in response to the cup. In fact we are using a double trigger with the baby, a verbal trigger and a visual trigger.
Because we are aiming for the baby to become conditioned on our verbal trigger it is important to mix up bath time conditioning with shower conditioning. In doing so we reinforce the conditioning process and ensure that our baby does not become reliant on the visual trigger of the cup.